Dive Brief:

• California State University trustees have settled a wrongful death lawsuit before it goes to trial, agreeing to pay $2.5 million to the parents of a mentally ill graduate student who was killed by Cal State San Bernardino police in a December 2012 fight.
• The university system denied liability and fault in the settlement and agreed to make changes to its crisis intervention policies. Additionally, all university police officers will receive at least 32 hours of crisis intervention training coordinated by local mental health authorities.
• The lawsuit, which was scheduled for trial in January, claimed unreasonable use of deadly force, civil rights violations, disability discrimination, wrongful death, and negligence.

Dive Insight:

This tragedy probably would have been averted had the police called in mental health officials instead of using force to try to take the student into custody. Before this summer, California State University police across the state had never had training to deal with encounters with the mentally ill, the Press Enterprise reported. The student, Bartholomew Williams, suffered from bipolar disorder and at the time of the incident had not taken his medication for a week. Police reported he seemed to have superhuman strength, absorbing a beating with batons and pepper spray with little effect as they tried to handcuff him to take him in for a mental health evaluation. Two police officers shot Williams after he had stomped on and pepper-sprayed a third officer, and a district attorney ruled that the shooting was justified because they had acted in self-defense.